1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a substrate measuring method, a computer-readable recording medium recording a program thereon, and a substrate processing system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a photolithography step in manufacturing process, for example, of a semiconductor device, for example, a plurality of steps such as a resist coating step of applying a resist solution onto a wafer to form a resist film, an exposure step of exposing the resist film into a predetermined pattern, a heating step of accelerating the chemical reaction in the resist film after exposure (post-exposure baking), and a developing step of developing the exposed resist film are performed in sequence, so that a predetermined resist pattern is formed on the wafer. The series of processing is performed in a coating and developing treatment system incorporating various kinds of processing and treatment units and wafer transfer units. Into the coating and developing treatment system, for example, the wafers are transferred from the outside as a unit of cassette (lot), and the wafers in a plurality of lots are successively transferred and processed.
Incidentally, to grasp, for example, the tendency within the wafer after the above-described series of processing, it is necessary to measure the processing state of the wafer such as the line width or the like of the resist pattern in the above-described coating and developing treatment system. The measurement of the wafer is performed by processing a test wafer before processing of a product wafer, for example, in the coating and developing treatment system and measuring the processing states at a plurality of measurement points on the test wafer surface, for example, by a measuring unit incorporated in the coating and developing treatment system (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2006-128572 and JP No. 2003-209093).
However, when the wafer processing state is measured using the test wafer as described above, it takes a long time to start processing of the product wafer because the processing of the product wafer is started after the measurement of the test wafer. For this reason, it is demanded to directly measure the processing state using the product wafer.
When using the product wafer, the product wafer will be measured after the product wafer is processed in the coating and developing treatment system. However, since product wafers in a plurality of lots are successively processed at a fixed throughput in the coating and developing treatment system, when the product wafers in the previous lot of two successive lots have been through the last step and the product wafers are then subjected to measurement, and in addition, and if it would have taken a long time for the measurement, the measurement of the product wafers in the lot subsequent thereto cannot be immediately performed even if the wafers in the subsequent lot have been through the processing. In this case, time to keep the product wafers in the subsequent lot waiting is generated, thus causing congestion of the successively processed product wafers, resulting in decreased throughput of the product wafers.